Willing to Love

Are you willing to love? I don’t mean accept, tolerate, or even appreciate, but really love. It’s more than getting along with others or being kind. Its even more than wishing goodness and happiness for others. Loving requires an open heart, an unguarded heart. Love demands that we release judgment and fear, allowing ourselves to be open and vulnerable.

I must confess that I’m not very good at loving. I know how to be loving towards people. I know how to do the things that love does, but my heart is still guarded. My son is the only person that I am able to fully, freely love. He’s the only one that I’m completely open and trusting with. There’s one of the keys to really loving… trust.

Trust is a real challenge for many of us because we’ve been hurt when we opened ourselves completely in love. From early childhood we’ve pulled away and built walls of protection around our hearts. We’ve felt the sting of rejection when we disappointed those we loved. We learned that love can hurt. Human beings have built-in pain avoidance systems that activate when we get hurt and remember the incident to protect us from being hurt again. To trust love, we have to be willing to risk getting hurt.

The difference for me between really loving and being guarded is the level of openness in my heart and the feeling of safety in being open. I have friends that I love very much, but I don’t reveal everything to them. Some things are still guarded for fear of judgment and rejection. My son is only 6 and he loves me with his whole being. He has seen me at my worst and loves me no less for it. I can be completely open and completely relaxed around him with no fear of judgment or rejection. That’s when I love fully, freely, fearlessly.

My challenge is to learn to love everyone that way, including myself. I’ve recognized my unwillingness to love fearlessly and where it comes from, but I have a long way to go. This is just the first step. I am willing to love.